In June of 2022 we headed out West with our main objective Yellowstone National Park.
The day we were to arrive, the entire park closed due to disastrous flooding. At least I got to see a lot of the rest of Wyoming.
I followed up that trip with a column title: “Making Lemonade from Lemons.”
Last July, I decided to plan one more bucket list trip: In June of 2025 I’d head to Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana.
In my three days there I was planning on making the hour-long drive up Going-to-the-Sun-Road and explore the Logan Pass area at over 6,500 feet in elevation.
The days I booked for my trip, unfortunately, didn’t cooperate weather-wise.
On Friday I was one of the first to reach the summit and was greeted with fog. After a few hours of trekking over snowpack and trying to photograph Rocky Mountain goats, it began to rain. I was chased from the area that day.
Well, maybe I can try again Saturday. No luck. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for more than a foot of snow in elevations over 6,000 feet.
So again, I’m making lemonade from the lemons I was given.
The narrow, winding and intimidating road up to the pass is a challenge enough, let alone with snow. The road was closed by the park staff anyway.
I’ll share some of the beauty and wildlife that area and surrounding Montana forested mountains did offer me.
The wild and scenic areas around West Glacier, Kalispell and Whitefish were worth the trip anyway. In addition to the Glacier National Park area, Flathead National Forest was also close by. There are some exceptional vistas, majestic snowcapped peaks and abundant animal and bird life, too.
The melting snowpack along Going-to-the-Sun-Road creates dozens of beautiful waterfalls, some that even cascade across your vehicle as you make the winding 20-mile drive to the Continental Divide, a trip you may not want to miss.
(But I will suggest that if you plan a nature trip somewhere special, a once in a lifetime trip, make sure you contact me and verify that I’m not going to the same place as you and bringing you the bad weather curse.)
I hope you enjoy the little tease of photos of this area and its wildlife that I’ll share this week.
Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: True/False — The brown trout is not native to the United States.
Last Week’s Trivia Answer: The brook trout is not actually a trout, but a type of char.
Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com
My primary goal was to get to the Continental Divide at Logan Pass, Montana, to find and photograph Rocky Mountain goats, bighorn sheep and maybe find a new bird or two. It is a unique drive there, and just the scenery getting there was amazing. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
I should have brought ski poles! As I hiked up the Hidden Lake Trail I soon encountered the snowpack. The temperature was about 39 degrees and basically only the south-facing slopes were free from the snow cover. It is in these open patches that ground squirrels, ptarmigan and bighorn sheep find food.
Nearly every rocky ravine gave birth to a cold, cascading stream formed from the melting snow above. This shows vehicles inching their way along the narrow, winding road leading to and through the Continental Divide.
Glacial lilies were just one of about a dozen flowers that emerge just as the snowpack melts. The alpine meadows held a few hardy spruce, but about 200 feet higher in elevation you found yourself above the treeline.
The first mammals I found on top of the mountain were Columbian ground squirrels. They remain in hibernation a long time, from October through early June.
Bighorn sheep rams and ewes move up the slopes following the receding snow cover to feed in the small alpine meadows there.
A large, old bighorn stopped, apparently to lick salt from the road. Bighorn sheep have horns, not antlers, that grow larger each year. You can age a ram once it reaches 4 years old and reveals the four-year ring. Each summer and winter produce rings on the horns, much like a tree trunk’s annual rings. This 250 pound ram appears to be more than 9 years old.
As summer temperatures slowly rise, more and more of the wooden boardwalk gets exposed, making the tiring climb a bit easier. This writer found little of the boardwalk and mostly dirty looking snowpack, making for a slippery walk. I only slipped and fell once, though. I got to about 7,500 feet in elevation but fog and rain chased me back down, albeit slowly, to the parking area there.
Driving back down Going-to-the-Sun-Road in the fog, I found a bighorn ram casually feeding on the top of a cliff face about 80 feet above me. They seem to be at ease walking on and jumping from ledge to ledge.
In the heart of the Flathead National Forest you may want to see the Hungry Horse Dam. A hydroelectric dam, it is 564 feet high and creates a lake over 30 miles long. You can travel the road 120 miles around the lake, but only 15 miles are paved.
LEFT: I found white-tailed deer feeding in any roadside clearing, and at times bounding across the road in front of me.
ABOVE: Also in the spruce-, larch- and aspen-covered Flathead Forest are mule deer. I was surprised to see both species of deer sharing the same beautiful mountainsides.